34. Jane
34
JANE
A s soon as I turned my phone back in when I landed in LA, I had an email from Chester’s assistant, stating he wanted a meeting with me the following morning at the LA office. It took me by surprise, since I had just seen him at the party. But come the next morning, I got dressed and went to the expansion office.
Although when I step inside, Chester isn’t the one seated behind the front desk.
“What are you doing here?” I ask Liam, who leans back in the swivel chair.
“Thanks for coming,” he says.
Why is he thanking me for coming? “Where’s Chester? I got an email from Lisa that we had a meeting this morning.”
He steeples his fingers beneath his chin and bats his eyelashes at me. Does he think that look still has the same effect on me that it used to?
“Did you know that Lisa recently got dumped by her fiancé?”
I glare at him. “You slept with Lisa just to get her to email me, tricking me into thinking Chester wanted to talk? Don’t you think if you have to go that route, you should know I don’t want to talk to you?”
He bats a hand at me. “I didn’t sleep with her. Please, I don’t need to do that to get what I want.”
I drop my purse on the front desk with a heavy thud. I lean forward on my knuckles and stare him down. “And what do you want, Liam? Why are you here?”
“We didn’t get a chance to talk the other night. Not when your guard dog couldn’t keep his paws off you.”
“We have nothing to talk about,” I say, ignoring his jab at Nikolai. I’m not going to indulge him.
“It doesn’t need to be like this,” he states.
“Like what?” I don’t hide my annoyance.
He gestures back and forth between us. “This animosity. This tension. You didn’t need to run to the other side of the country just because I started working at the same place.”
Is he fucking kidding me? “You think I ran to the other side of the country because of you ?” I laugh. “Oh God, you haven’t changed.”
He clenches his jaw and straightens the front of his shirt that fits him in all the wrong places. Just because something’s expensive, doesn’t mean it looks good. He needs to learn that lesson.
“I moved here to pursue bigger opportunities. And I found them. None of that has anything to do with you. Do you really think I’d let you hold so much power over my career when we aren’t even together anymore?”
“So it’s just ironic timing that you moved shortly after I started?”
“The timeline is irrelevant. What matters is that I did what was best for me and I’m happy.”
“Are you?”
“Yes,” I say. “And honestly, Liam, I hope you find someone that makes you happy, too.”
He leans on the desk and plants his chin on his knuckles. “I’m surprised you found happiness with someone who has a very public girlfriend who is not you. Does she know he attended a party, feeling up another woman, this weekend?”
I push my shoulders back, hackles rising, knowing where he’s going with this. “You signed an NDA. You can’t talk about anything you saw at that party.”
He grins, flashing me a row of perfectly straight white teeth. “Maybe not. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t get an eyeful. He was quite over the top with. Like he was overcompensating.”
I can’t even imagine how I ever thought I loved this guy before. How I ever let him dictate how I felt about myself and gave him that kind of power over me.
He’s just an insecure, small man who took his own feelings of inadequacy out on me. So many years I spent with him, and I don’t want to give him any more of my time.
I grab my purse and rap my knuckles against the counter. “Have a good flight back to Boston.”
“Be careful, Jane. I know guys like him.”
I can’t help the cackle that works its way up my throat. “You know guys like him?”
“Cocky, arrogant artists who think the world should bow down to their every whim simply because they can play an instrument or string a couple of sentences together. I just didn’t think you’d fall for that sort of act.”
An act?
“Did you forget you literally cheated on me?”
“I’m not saying my hands are clean. I’m just saying that you’re smart and I don’t think you’d want to put yourself in that position again.”
I’m almost too stunned to speak at his audacity. The fact that he would convince Lisa to set up this meeting, fly all the way out, just to what…warn me about Nikolai? Because he thinks he’s bad for me? Where does he get off? When did he suddenly care about my feelings and well-being?
I’m over this conversation. Pushing away from the desk, I start to walk backward toward the door.
Liam watches my steps but makes no move to stop me. For someone who wanted to talk so badly, he doesn’t seem motivated to convince me to stay. Maybe he sees the resolution on my face.
Maybe he just wanted to be able to have the final word.
“I trust him,” I say resolutely. “He’d never betray me like you did.”
Liam shrugs. “If you say so. See you around, Jane.”
I turn and strut toward the door. “You won’t actually,” I call over my shoulder. It’s petty to want to get the final word in, but trying to be the bigger person all the time is grating.
The door slams shut behind me as I step out into the sunshine.
Me: Good luck tonight. I’ll be watching :)
Nikolai: Sorry just seeing this babe. Been in the studio all day. I’ll be singing for you
Me: xoxo
I settle on the couch and flip the TV on. I don’t usually love late night TV, but for Nikolai, I’d watch paint dry. The smell of buttery popcorn fills the air, wafting upstairs from the machine I used all by myself. I pop a handful of kernels into my mouth as I listen to the interview at the top of the show.
It’s some hockey player that I’ve never heard of but he’s hot enough that I find myself paying attention. Not as hot as Nikolai, but then again, no one is. But I won’t ever tell him that. He doesn’t need a bigger ego.
The host wraps up the interview and teases the upcoming music performance when we get back. I whip the blanket off my lap and dash to the bathroom.
By the time I get back to the living room, the commercial break is over and the screen cuts to Nikolai and Kerra. He’s dressed in black pants, a black belt with silver hardware that matches his watch and rings, and a black button-up. Fuck, he looks edgy and moody with the lack of color. He usually wears a pop of something, but I like this monochromatic dark look on him. It makes his light eyes and hair pop.
He starts singing and I feel his voice through the screen and down to my toes. I curl them against the sofa cushion and fiddle with my necklace. The camera cuts to a close-up on his face and I want to lick the little frown line that forms between his brows as he sings a higher note.
A hand snakes around his shoulder, interrupting the otherwise pristine shot. The fingers have long, sharp nails and they claw at his shirt. It breaks me out of my stupor.
The camera goes back to a wide shot and although I knew it was coming, I don’t like seeing Kerra with her hands all over him. To Nikolai’s credit, he slips out from beneath her hold gracefully and gives the floor over to her for her verse.
I try to keep my eyes on Nikolai in the background, not wanting to focus on any part of her performance. But she’s making it nearly impossible because she keeps trying to pull him to the shot. She wraps her hands around his arms, looks up at him with a flutter of her lashes.
She’s laying it on thick tonight.
It’s nothing new with their performance, but something about seeing it now, after I finally feel like I’ve fully let Nikolai back in and we’re on the same page about things, makes it harder to swallow.
I pop a few more pieces of popcorn in my mouth just to preoccupy my hands. If I wasn’t trying to be such a supportive girlfriend, I’d turn this off so I wouldn’t have to see any more of it.
But I trust Nikolai and as the song comes to a close, he really has looked uncomfortable throughout the performance. He sings out the final note and my mind goes to a dreamlike space hearing his voice. Even after all these years, his singing still affects me the same way.
The bubble is burst the moment Kerra stands on her tiptoes and presses her mouth to his when the lingering piano chords die out.
Blood roars in my ears and I drop my hands to my sides in shock. The camera pans away from their kiss to the cheering audience and my heart plummets to the floor. The next shot shows the host, closing out the show and bidding everyone a good night. Commercials begin to roll but I’m too stunned to change the channel.
He kissed her.
He kissed Kerra on live TV.
Well, she initiated it but he didn’t stop it.
What the fuck just happened?
My hands are clammy as I run them through my hair. I’m trying to process what I just saw, to keep rationality at the front of mind, but my emotions are too entangled in the situation to think straight.
I know Nikolai has been working hard to prove himself to me the last few months. He’s been doing everything he can to gain my trust back and I know he doesn’t actually like Kerra.
Logically, I know .
But I also know Nikolai has hurt me in the past. And as hard as I’ve worked to seal those gaping wounds he left me with, seeing him kiss another woman just ripped them all apart.
My head and heart, recently realigned on their feelings toward Nikolai, reignite their war.
I know that Nikolai has been sincere with me. But that doesn’t mean that small voice in the back of my head sits quietly.
As I curl up on the couch, tucking the blanket tight beneath my chin, I wonder.
Has any of it been real?